Lejla Odobasic Novo
background. They are clearly weathered, and to a large extent eroded, by the harsh wind characteristic of this region. Some have been structurally reinforced to prevent their total disappearance but not enough to complete the narrative of the place. There are no plaques, signs or visible explanations to the history of the place. We must construct this narrative ourselves by relying on our own understanding of such sites. A sense of isolation engulfs the entire site. The camp is sequestrated from the town but also forms the town’s urban configuration. It follows a rigid military grid organisation with a central assembly area thus creating a set of imposed living rules defined by military logic and separated from a ‘normal life’. At other parts of the site wild scrub overpowers the landscape showing both the passage of time and furthering contemplation of the past and its relation to the present.
Koselleck’s work anticipated that of James Young who, shortly after, used the term counter-monument in referring to several German monuments that shared a condition of invisibility, either by virtue of their initial placement or their eventual disappearance. 5 His reading of counter-monuments focused mainly on those created in the early 1990s and particularly on memorials that disappeared, changed form or remained partially hidden when installed. This notion of absence or disappearance remains a strong element in the design of memorial sites. Another element of the counter-monument which is heavily explored in the contemporary memorial design, is the involvement of the visitor –- the need for their interaction to complete the meaning of the memorial. Many contemporary memorials follow a set of design elements that align with the characteristics of counter- monuments: they are stern, even austere, in their shape and material; they demand visitor interaction; they provoke memory work and they bear witness to absence while creating an unrelenting civic presence that is able to evolve over time.
Rivesaltes Memorial museum near Perpignan in the south of France, was in many ways designed in the spirit of a counter- monument. Designed by Rudy Ricciotti and Passelac & Roques architects, it opened in 2015. This former military camp bears witness to a multitude of forced displacement histories starting with its formation in 1938. It was both a military area and a transit and internment camp between 1938 and1977, experienced by between 50,000 and 80,000 people. Through harsh weather and difficult living conditions hundreds died in Rivesaltes; others, during the Second World War, were sent on to Nazi extermination camps. The Rivesaltes Memorial site includes two parts: a new museum consisting of a monolithic structure sunk into the ground in the outline of the former central assembly area of block F, and the remnants of the eroding barracks surrounding the museum. Upon arrival, it is only the former barracks that are visible in the landscape. The remains of the old barracks are framed by the sky above and the mountains in the
5 Young, James. ‘The counter-monument: Memory against itself in Germany today’, Critical Inquiry, 18:2, 1992. pp 267–96
on site review 36: our material future
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